


the italy in my dreams has burned to ashes.

by minecraftyoutuberthings



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Ghostbur, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28565769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minecraftyoutuberthings/pseuds/minecraftyoutuberthings
Summary: He opens his eyes to see Ghostbur, eyes conflicted, holding out a piece of lapis lazuli.“Please, take some blue,” he says, voice anxious and poorly hidden.Wilbur glares at him. “No.”..While gathering gunpowder to use to blow up L’manberg, Wilbur crosses paths with someone named Ghostbur.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 132





	the italy in my dreams has burned to ashes.

Wilbur is gathering gunpowder, _again._

He is wielding Dream’s sword. A glowing, diamond sword where the only enchantment that matters to him is looting three and is most likely the best weapon he’s ever had. He slashes, quick and clean. The creeper dies in one hit. No chance to fight. No chance to blow up, to relish in the destruction that it creates by sacrifice of its own body.

Wilbur will be different. 

Oddly, this mindless grinding reminds him of the time he used to spend with Techno. They rarely sparred, but when they did, it would last for hours. Not that Wilbur particularly enjoyed it, near the end, where he’d be tired, sweaty, and delirious and Techno would chuckle in that deadly way, silent and predator-like. 

He does not fight much anymore. Techno tends to rely more on mechanical weapons rather than his own sword. He saw it in his eyes, Wilbur did, the euphoria, the superiority Techno felt over his massacre at the festival. At the stacked amount of names in chat, all the deaths he’d caused, all the pain he inflicted.

Techno does not crave combat. Not anymore. He craves violence and destruction and everything _bad._

It’s perfect for Wilbur.

* * *

Wilbur didn’t expect anyone to be out this far. He doesn’t think anyone _did_ come out this far. But there is a blue sheep out here. It walk up to him and makes an odd noise and presses itself up against his side in some odd display of affection. 

He does not have the patience to figure out where it came from, why it keeps following him, nor does he want to waste his sword's durability killing it. So, it stays, roaming the plains alongside Wilbur, watching him slay creeper after creeper until his inventory fills with gunpowder, until the sky turns to orange and red and finally, dark. It stands by his side as he lays out a sleeping bag, a chest for his materials, and until he lays down, waiting for sleep to claim him.

...Is what he would’ve said if he didn’t hear a voice coming from the forest to the left. Sitting up, slightly dazed, Wilbur strains his ears to hear the distant voice yell, “Friend! Friend, where are you?”

The sheep gently nudges Wilbur and starts to walk towards the woods. When it notices Wilbur staring incredulously, it near knocks him over with how urgently it pushes him. 

“Fine, fine, you damn sheep,” Wilbur mutters, standing up and cracking his neck. It baas happily in response, and they both walk into the forest, guided only by a strangely familiar voice yelling in the distance for their “Friend.” 

As they walk along, the voice starts to grow stronger, right until Wilbur yells back, “Be quiet!” and walks into a clearing, rolling his eyes. “Your sheep has been following me for—”

Wilbur stops dead in his tracks.

The person he sees looks almost exactly like him. He wears a yellow jumper and glasses Wilbur hasn’t seen in years, holds a book to his side delicately. His hair is grey. His skin is grey. 

“Who are you?”

The man that looks like him smiles. “My name is Ghostbur.” The sheep treads to his side, sticking its head under the hand of Ghostbur. It looks like it's smiling. “Thank you for finding my—”

 _“Ghostbur?_ Your name is Ghostbur?”

“Well, yes. I was Wilbur, and then something awful happened. Now I’m Ghostbur.” 

“You—you _can’t_ be Wilbur. I’m Wilbur. I haven’t died. Ghosts aren’t real.” 

Ghostbur frowns, eyebrows drawn. “I am a ghost. Look.” 

Ghostbur puts a hand through Wilbur’s chest. It’s _cold._ Impossibly so. It feels invading, personal, and when he draws away, something is _missing._ Like he _took_ something from Wilbur. As if a piece of his soul has been stripped from him. The reactionary in him moves to pull out his sword, logic of Ghostbur’s transparency disregarded, but he forces himself to relax. 

What does it matter? This feeling of emptiness is simply a variation of what he already feels. Wilbur doesn’t need to care about what he feels when he already has a definitive goal, can already imagine how it will feel when he presses the button, when L’manburg gets blown to _kingdom fucking come._

He will know true euphoria, he will have that same look in Techno’s eye, day of that dreaded festival. He was supposed to be standing on that hill, looking into nothing, into grey. Because it was supposed to be gone. He was supposed to be standing there, standing in an achingly deep crater, everyone _dead._ He should have been dead. L’manberg should have been no more. Gone. Demolished. 

It will be. Soon. 

Wilbur takes a few deep, grounding breaths. He opens his eyes to see Ghostbur, eyes conflicted, holding out a piece of lapis lazuli.

“Please, take some blue,” he says, voice anxious and poorly hidden. 

Wilbur glares at him. “No.”

Ghostbur leaves it by his feet, in the grass. “I don’t like this place very much,” he says conversationally. “There are no buildings. Only trees and grass. But Friend likes the grass. L’manberg doesn’t have that.” 

“L’manberg?” 

“Yes. We all live on these wooden platforms above the crater. Friend does not like it very much, so I leave her outside of the crane sometimes and she eats all of the grass around it.”

Wilbur goes very, very still as Ghostbur starts to stand up. “Crater?” he asks. 

“Yes. I assume someone blew it up before we started living there. I… don’t want to know why. They told me that it would be better if I didn’t know. I trust Tubbo.”

Before Wilbur can say anything, Ghostbur says, “Do you hear that?” and Wilbur turns around to see a skeleton’s arrow shoot directly at his forehead.

He falls over and his vision begins to blur. 

* * *

Wilbur wakes up in a house.

The first thing he checks is his inventory, looking to see if all of his gunpowder is there, and it _isn’t._ It’s emptied out, spare a piece of blue wool named _friendship wool!_ and around a stack of lapis lazuli. He stumbles out and realizes that it’s Purpled’s house. Wilbur immediately begins his trek back to the clearing where the rest of his gunpowder should be stored. 

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t mean _anything._ Who is Ghostbur? Where did he come from? Why does he know Tubbo? Why does it sound like he lives in a L’manberg that’s already been _destroyed?_

Why was L’manberg still a country? 

Wilbur needs to…think. To revise his plan. To make sure he completely and utterly decimates L’manberg. Destroy it to the point that nothing can rebuild, to the point that the mere memory is wiped from existence. 

Wilbur needs to talk to Techno.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this was enjoyable! I do have ideas that i might put into a part two if this does well enough, but thank you for reading!


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